


Come Hell or High Water

by mindheist



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Blood and Gore, F/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1713767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindheist/pseuds/mindheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins, like most things, in the water. When the Pirate King Odin dies, Thor has one chance to seize the position, and with pirates, a single chance has never been enough. Pirates of the Caribbean!AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Hell or High Water

**Author's Note:**

> whoa check out [this](http://8tracks.com/carboxyl/come-hell-or-high-water) score that goes with the fic!!

“Odin is dead.”

The words are quick and whispered, hurried syllables tickling the shell of Thor’s ear. The ale turns to ash in his mouth as he turns in his seat, looking into the sallow face of his shipmate, Fandral. The music, the dancing, the shouted conversation around him falters as the news settles in his brain.

“Your father is dead.”

“How do you know of this?” Thor asks, setting down his mug on the splintered pub table. “Who have you heard from?”

“Lady Sif said she just caught word of it after returning from a pillage and plunder from one of the French trade ships. His ship was overtaken off the coast of Sweden. It was a quick, merciless ambush. No survivors,” Fandral says, taking a swig of ale from Thor’s glass. “I’m sorry, my friend.”

“No need to act so formal around me,” Thor says, reaching for his drink again. “My father left me to the high seas when I was but a mere youngling. The only mother I ever knew was the cruel oceans.”

Fandral is quiet as the bar lady sets down a full mug of beer in front of him. He doesn’t touch it, even pushing it aside slightly. 

“Thor,” Fandral says, leaning forward and lowering his voice—not that anyone could possibly hope of overhearing them in a pub as rowdy as the one on Vanaheim—“Lady Sif urged me to tell you this not only to let you know the fate of your father, but also as a warning that your brother may be planning a more malicious agenda.”

Thor raises his eyebrows.

“Loki? What could he be up to?”

“Odin was the Pirate King of the third brethren court,” Fandral explains. “And with that seat empty now…”

“There needn’t always be a Pirate King,” Thor points out. “There have only always been Lords, and Kings when needed. Even so, I am the natural successor by blood.”

“Thor, this is the brethren court, not a monarchy! You have no claim to anything by blood. You do need to remember that there were never any real Pirate Kings because all the Lords would only ever vote for themselves, until your father. He was the first one to ever have earned that position after the Pirate Lord of the South China Sea saw him as the true leader. What makes you think Loki hasn’t been eyeing that throne for years?”

Thor drinks deeply from his draught, wordless. 

“You need to summon a meeting of the brethren court before Loki does, my friend,” Fandral says. His eyes are troubled. “Or I fear that your brother will, and if he does he will find a way to terrorize the seven other Pirate Lords into crowning him King. He is not afraid of them. He did not hesitate to maroon you on the Philippine Islands all those years ago, Thor, and I hardly see him ignorant of the changes in our world.” He punches Thor lightly in the arm. “Or would you prefer to sit back and watch your estranged brother seize all that power?”

“Did you say no survivors?” Thor asks after a moment of silence. 

“That is what Lady Sif said she heard.”

“Well, Fandral,” Thor says, “I believe we have ourselves a mission.”

Thor slams his mug down onto the table and stands. A smile is already beginning to spread over Fandral’s face as Thor climbs up on his bar stool, roaring over the din of the pub. 

“Crewmen of the Demigod! We sail at dawn!”

☠☠☠

Vanaheim is can be found, uncharted, near the warmer waters of the Mediterranean. It is a long, long journey away from the Caribbean Islands and Shipwreck Island, and the Demigod sets off full sail the very next morning.

“We’re sailing at about thirty knots right now, Captain,” one of the men says to Thor from the mast.

“That’s good,” says Thor distractedly, studying the map of the Atlantic. He’s braved her waters for his entire life, and all his crewmen know it, so when he gives no further orders, the man scurries away. 

“Why do you look so bothered, Captain Thor?”

It’s Sif. She comes to stand next to Thor on quarter deck, and nods at his weatherbeaten map. “You know these waters like the palms of your hands, why are you still studying the map with such intensity?”

Thor chuckles, staring out into the lightening horizon. “One can never know the oceans too well, Lady Sif,” Thor replies. “And only those who think they do get lost at sea.”

She smiles back at him. It fades and she lays a hand on his arm. “I am sorry about your father, Captain,” she murmurs. “It is a great loss.”

“To the world of piracy, perhaps,” Thor agrees. “Not to me. It is simply disconcerting to know that I sail this world as the last survivor of the Odinson bloodline. We’ve held out for many a decade already, surpassed by none.”

“The Sparrows,” Sif mentions. “Captain Teague of Madagascar still has a living son, Jack Sparrow, somewhere in this, blasted, bloody world.”

“Hmm,” Thor hums. “Volstagg, how fares the weather?”

“We may be sailin’ into a storm, Cap’n,” Volstagg offers grimly, shortening his telescope. “If we’re lucky, it’ll fall over us on the tail end of the night and into the morn, but if the wind isn’t kind to us it may as well be on us in the very evenin’.”

“How long shall it be?”

“I can’t say, Cap’n,” Volstagg says. “With the air as torpid as this I might chance a guess that it’ll be a tropical storm, and it really depends on where she moves.”

“We’ll just have to sail how we always have, then,” Thor says resolutely. “And hope that Calypso is kind to us.”

Night falls quickly, and the sky is so clear that the light of the stars illuminates the ocean a ghostly blue-green. Belowdecks, the gallery is dry and warm, and Thor celebrates being back on the seas with his crewmen with a hearty meal, replete with rum. The food and drink is hot in Thor’s belly when he sees the first telltale flash of lightning from the window, hitting the surface of the water and crackling out in a heartbeat. 

“The storm is here,” he says, standing up and taking the stairs two at a time back onto the deck. Even as he speaks he hears thunder rumble, and the clouds that had been so absent just earlier darken and block out the last slivers of light. 

“It came out of nowhere!” Hogun shouts as lightning streaks across the sky again. The wind has picked up, and the sails of the Demigod fill and billow with each gust. 

“Reign in some of the topsails, or the wind will blow us off course,” Thor shouts as he grabs the wheel at the helm. It’s already spinning by itself lazily, and he yanks it with force so brute that he can hear the groan of the sail yards swinging into place against the wind. With difficulty he reaches into his pocket and gropes for his compass, but the sea bucks suddenly then, and a gush of water pools onto the deck. Rolls of thunder tumble through the clouds and lightning strikes so close at one point that Thor swears he can smell the searing burn of it through the air.

“Cap’n, we’ve got her stabilized down below,” Volstagg says from behind Thor. He can barely be heard now that the rain has started, falling in sheets over the gleaming deck of the Demigod. “We got ev’thing tied down and all the sails you wanted tied up.”

“She won’t be stable for long,” Thor shouts. “Man the sails. Bring those in that need be and let free the ones that will keep us on course.”

“Aye!”

Thor’s crewmen disappear into the rain, and the ocean continues to toss the Demigod across its foamy surface like a bath toy. During the briefest lull, Thor reaches again for his compass, and manages to flip it open with his hands still on the wheel.

The pin spins crazily, like a clock missing its gears. Thor shakes it, and when it refuses to work, not pointing to anything, he hears a soft laugh right beside him.

“Broken compass? Those are the worst to repair, in my experience.” 

“Loki,” Thor spits. “How—?”

 _No survivors._ Fandral’s voice echoed in Thor’s ears. He berates himself internally for not having seen it sooner—of course it had been Loki to attack their father’s ship—only he would have been quick enough to find Gungnir, one of the fastest ships of the seas, and be able to ambush it in the same night. Only he would have been thorough enough to make sure every soul was sent off at sea. 

“It was really quite simple,” Loki says, leaning on the wheel, and no matter how hard Thor tries to shake him off with a jerk, Loki does not budge. _“Father,”_ he sneers, “didn’t exactly take much care in hiding his whereabouts. He didn’t think anyone could challenge him, anyway. He’d been dawdling in Sweden for weeks, brother, it was pathetic. He was only preparing to set sail that night because he’d heard that there was some revolutionary activity happening in England and thought that in the mess he’d be able to find something worth keeping.” 

“You killed the only man that ever called you a son!”

“Please, Thor,” Loki says, waving an airy hand. “That man didn’t even call you son once before he threw you to the dolphins, what makes you think he cared for a moment what I was to him. And his blood actually runs in your veins, brother! He didn’t even recognize me when I slit his weak throat. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked him. Do you know what he replied with?” Loki leans forward, lip curling, rain pouring down his face and hair. “‘A monster.’”

“He was right,” snarls Thor.

“Oh, come now, Thor, don’t be so intolerant. You know that with him gone, there’s an opening for Pirate King?” He feigns surprise at Thor’s darkening scowl. “Oh. You did now, didn’t you?” Loki laughs humorlessly. “Did you really think, for a second there, that you would beat me to Shipwreck Island?”

“You don’t deserve to be King.”

“Neither do you,” Loki points out. “You’re an arrogant brute that does nothing but drink on his arse all day. At least under my power the brethren court would actually be of some bloody use!”

Thor pulls his sword from his belt at this, training the tip at Loki’s nose. “You will take back what you said.”

“Oh, captain, my captain,” Loki says, shaking his head. “I meant every word.”

As soon as the last word is out of Loki’s mouth, there’s a deafening blast as a cannon fires at the Demigod. Thor dives to his left to avoid flying splinters of wood, and when he looks up, Loki is gone, standing on a ship that has pulled up mast to mast with Thor’s own. The curve of the keel, and the spear at the helm—Thor has seen this ship in the past. It’s Gungnir.

“Not only did you slaughter our father, you commandeered his ship?” Thor bellows. He swings onto the deck and shouts at his crewmen, “Load the starboard guns, men! Prepare to fire on my word!” 

There’s a great clambering as everyone makes it down into the gun decks. Barrels roll as they reach for gunpowder and fuse, and Thor grabs a spoke of the wheel, turning it so fiercely he hears the ship protest under his hands. The vessel is wrenched around so that the Demigod swings away from Gungnir’s loaded side and to the exposed port side. 

Thor abandons the wheel for a moment to lean down into the gun deck. “On my word! Easy boys—easy—” His crew members watch him, eyes glimmering with anticipation. Suddenly, Volstagg shouts, 

“Cap’n!”

Thor jerks up into a standing position only to come face to chest with one of the Frost Pirates of the North—huge, beastly creatures more than men. He smiles, showing a row of rotting teeth before Thor feels fists connect with his temples. 

The ship explodes with the yells and battle cries of Frost Pirates, their feet stampeding across the deck. Thor just barely parries a swing of a sword from one of them, head still reeling from the blow the pirate had dealt him. He feels eyes upon his back and turns to see Loki sitting leisurely on the yard of the mizzenmast, fingertips steepled and surveying the fight with gleaming eyes. 

“You don’t know what you’re up against, brother.”

Splinters of the Demigod torn wood fly through the air as Gungnir unleashes another volley of cannonfire. Just as Thor manages to get his blade through the chest of one of Loki’s men, he hears a terrible crack when base of the foremast is torn through. The ship lurches as it falls and a few of Thor’s men are so unlucky to be crushed by it. 

“Give up, Captain,” Loki says. He’s belowdecks now, in the gun gallery, and the Frost Pirates have Thor’s crewmen in headlocks. There are streaks of oil poured all over the floor, seasoned with gunpowder. One of them is holding a lit fuse.

“No,” Thor says under his breath. He lunges. “No!”

The Frost Pirate drops the fuse, and Thor’s world goes up in flames.

☠☠☠

“Careful—careful, I think he hit his head pretty hard.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

☠☠☠

The first thing Thor is aware of is the crackling of fire.

For someone who sailed the seas for all his life, Thor thinks it’s weirdly poetic for fire to be his ultimate demise. It leads him to believe that he must be in one of two places—trapped in the Demigod, still, or in Hell. Either one of them are viable options, but what with the pain that erupts in his head as soon as he tries to move a limb, Hell seems more likely. 

“Be still, my friend,” says a deep, rumbling voice. It is unfamiliar. “You are still injured.”

“Who are you?” Thor asks, unable to open his eyes. “What have you done?”

“You washed up on the shores of Midgar,” says the voice. It is reassuring enough for Thor to lie back. “You came floating in on some flotsam, near death. One of the tribespeople found you and brought you to me.”

When Thor’s vision finally clears, he sees a dark-skinned man leaning over him, golden eyes trained on his face. The fire is contained in the hearth and the light of its flames flicker across the man’s cheekbones. He stands up, clapping his hands together. 

“I am Heimdall. I believe I do not know you are, however.”

Thor swallows with some difficulty. His mouth is as parched as the Serengeti. “Thor,” he croaks. “Captain Thor Odinson.”

“Captain,” Heimdall says. “Under whose colors?”

“My own.”

“Your own,” Heimdall repeats, raising his eyebrows. “Are you an explorer, like my friend Selvig?” He gestures to a balding man crouched outside the window, sketching a tropical flower with great concentration into a leather bound notebook. 

Thor licks his lips, and becomes very aware that he is not wearing a shirt, and the pirate brand on his wrist must be exposed in full view. He surreptitiously tucks his hand under his back. “I am an explorer of sorts, yes.”

Heimdall’s chuckle comes out not unlike a roll of thunder. “No need to hide it from me, Captain Thor,” he says, still busying himself with something at a table across the room. “I’m not one to condemn pirates. The Midgar tribe has played host to many a pirate in the past. We know your tricks, and we aren’t afraid of your kind.”

“No,” Thor says, pushing himself up onto his elbows. Heimdall turns, cup in hand. The contents of it are steaming as he hands it to Thor. 

“Drink.”

Thor does. It tastes terrible, but it quenches his thirst, and he’s finished with it before he finds his words again. “No, you don’t understand,” Thor says, voice coming back stronger. “I’m not here to pillage your town.”

“I very well hope not,” says Heimdall, taking the cup from Thor. “Because you may be the strongest pirate I’ve met, but you alone with nothing but a pistol filled with wet gunpowder against the village stand no match.”

“Did you happen to have seen any of my men?” Thor asks. “Or a lady, Lady Sif, she’s a warrior. My vessel was destroyed, it was all destroyed, we were attacked—”

“Who attacked you?”

Thor can feel his face darken. “My brother.”

“Your brother did this?”

“My brother is Captain Loki,” Thor glowers, “Pirate Lord of the Arctic Ocean.”

“Ah,” Heimdall says. He stands, looking out the window that faces the sea. It is calm, the moonlight lambent across the surface. “Yes, I have seen him. He is a ruthless captain, that Loki. Never leaves any survivors.”

“You’ve met him?”

“No. I have seen him. I see everyone in this world, Thor. i am the all-seeing Shaman Oracle of Midgar, and what I have seen of Captain Loki does not leave me sleeping easy at night.”

“You’re awake!”

The explorer Selvig is stepping into Heimdall’s small cabin, stomping wet sand from his shoes. “How are you?”

“I am good, thank you,” Thor says. This Selvig makes him wary, with his wisp of flyaway grey hair and watery eyes. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“No, no, that was all Heimdall’s doing,” Selvig says. “I only had rum to clean your wounds.”

“And an excellent job that served,” Heimdall says modestly. “Erik Selvig is one of the only explorers to have come without the intention of colonizing us,” he explains. “Which is how we even let him live so long.”

The other two men laugh heartily, though Thor isn’t so sure it’s a joke.

“Would you like something to eat, Thor?” Heimdall asks. “Selvig eats like a boar, so I hope you don’t mind sharing.”

There is a pleasant sizzling and a smell of meat permeating the air before Selvig asks Thor any real questions. 

“What is it that you plan to do now?”

Thor shakes his head. He feels hollow, like a hole has been punched through his chest. “I don’t know,” he replies. “My ship is dead, and so are my crewmen...even if they weren’t, Loki would find a way to kill them. There’s no way they could be alive. Lady Sif might have stood a chance. She wouldn’t have gone down with a fight. I fear to think that Loki might have done to her.”

“A shipless, crewless captain,” Selvig says. “I’m truly sorry for your loss. What were you sailing so ardently for that you tried to steer through a storm like that?”

Thor hesitates. “I shouldn’t tell you.”

“We won’t tell the Royal Navy of your whereabouts,” Heimdall says, “if that’s what you’re afraid of. I don’t particularly like them either, and Selvig was abandoned by them when they found he was conducting unauthorized research. They called him a heretic.”

Thor stares at him blankly.

“A traitor to the church,” Selvig mumbles.

Thor sighs. “My father, Odin, was the Pirate King. My brother, Loki, murdered him and seized his ship, and is on the way to Shipwreck Island to call a meeting of the Nine Pirate Lords so that they will recognize him as King. I must stop him.”

“Are you doing this for the good of your brethren?” asks Heimdall, setting down a plate of mystery meat on the table. “Or for yourself?”

“If you had asked me that two nights ago, I would have said myself without missing a heartbeat,” Thor admits. “But after I have seen what he is capable of, and what he is unafraid to do...I do not wish to see the ships of my brethren sunken in ice cold blood.”

Heimdall pulls out a chair on his side of the table, sitting down and folding his hands together. He doesn’t speak immediately, but when he does, all he says is, “There is not much I can help you with, nor much I can offer but legend.”

“Legend?”

Selvig’s face lights up. “Is this the one about—”

“Yes, Selvig. Legend has it, Thor, that there is a pirate weapon called Mjolnir. It is a hammer that was forged in the deepest of all seas,” drawing a rough outline in the dust of the table with his fingertips. “Enchanted by Calypso, the sea goddess herself, to be immovable by anyone except one who was worthy of wielding it.”

Thor blinks. “A hammer,” he says disbelievingly.

“It can call forth storms,” Selvig adds excitedly. “Thunder, and lightning. Snow and sleet. He who can wield it can summon the sunken ship, the God of Thunder, from the very depths of the ocean. A ship that gods sailed on.”

“And, some say,” Heimdall says, “it can bring those who died on board the God of Thunder back to life.”

For a while, only the heat of the fire and the distant pound of waves against the shore can be heard. Then, 

“That is terribly hard to believe.”

“I did warn you that I have little to give you but legend,” Heimdall says, though Selvig looks thoroughly disappointed.

“Well,” Thor says slowly, “pirates are supposed to be legends as well, aren’t they?”

☠☠☠

It’s a jar of seashells.

“Is the jar of seashells going to help?” 

Thor tries, and fails, to keep the skepticism out of his voice. Heimdall simply gives him a look, then ignores him, but Selvig chirps, “Don’t doubt him, Captain. Heimdall predicted your arrival with these shells. They’re said to be pieces broken from the staff of Calypso.”

Heimdall sets a heavy pewter cauldron on the table, and Selvig helps clear away the plates for room. Deftly, he pours some oil from the kerosene lamp into the cauldron and starts a small fire. The shells clack against each other as he pours a handful into his palms, and then Heimdall begins muttering something unintelligible over them.

“What’s he saying?” Thor whispers.

“Ancient rites to the gods of sea,” Selvig replies. “First he asks to communicate with them, then he thanks them for anything they’re willing to show him.”

Thor watches as Heimdall finishes his monologue and throws the shells into the fire. It flares, and turns a fiery red, then bursts from the mouth of the cauldron. Thor stumbles back slightly, shielding his eyes. They can’t even see Heimdall behind the column of flames, but if he chances a glance, he thinks he too can see shapes moving in the fire.

The ritual does not last long. The cabin falls into darkness when the fire subsides and Heimdall’s eyes are glowing a gold-red. Silently, he reaches into the cauldron and fishes out the seashells, dripping with yellow greasel.

“What did you see?” asks Selvig.

“Mjolnir is in a land not known to us.”

“What?” Thor looks between Selvig and Heimdall. “What does that mean, a land not known to us?”

“A land that neither I nor Selvig have been to, and a land you have only seen in passing,” Heimdall says cryptically. “The New World.”

Thor has heard of the New World in trade stories, in pubs and on sailing journeys. Once, when they’d made port in Barbados, the locals had mentioned the colonies of England, how they were prospering and how there was talk of an uprising against the British monarchy. Thor had had only taken note to perhaps visit these colonies and see if there were any trades worth making.

“How will we get to the New World?” Thor asks as Selvig unrolls one of his dog-eared maps. Colored pins and threads dot and stretch over lands and oceans, and Selvig points at a tiny island just barely off the coast of Africa.

“Here we are, in Midgar,” he says. Delicately, his finger traces a worn red thread across the Atlantic until it meets land again. “And here is the New World.” He twangs a thread pressed up against the red. “The blue string is the route of the Royal Navy trade ships. They make port,” he slaps his finger down on a star on the coast of the New World, “in Boston Harbor.”

☠☠☠

“That ship?”

The HMS Newcastle is an impressive vessel—midnight blue and lined in gold, it’s flanked by two smaller ships, the HMS Blackwall and HMS Hampton Court. They are still docked in the small port on the African coast, and men in pompous white wigs are discussing something apparently urgent, waving scrolls around in their frustration. 

“That one,” Thor says, pointing at the Newcastle. “I’m going to commandeer that one.”

“Are you mad?” Selvig asks, slapping a hand onto Thor’s shoulder to keep him in his crouching position. “Even if you took down the entire crew on that ship, the men on the other two would make sure to see you dead in the water.”

“Selvig is right, Thor,” Heimdall cuts in as Thor is about to protest. “The best chance you have of seeing land again is being a stowaway in the Newcastle.”

Thor doesn’t fancy the idea of living in the bilges of a Royal Navy ship for the entire journey to the New World, but Selvig and Heimdall unfortunately have good points. He struggles with the decision for a moment. “Fine. You two stay on the lookout for me. If you don’t see me again, I’ll have gotten in.”

“Are you mad?” Selvig repeats. “The New World! A beautiful new place to explore! I’m not staying behind, I’m definitely coming with you.”

“So will I.” Thor looks at Heimdall in disbelief. “Do not question my motives, Captain,” he says. “The gods have shown me reason to partake in this voyage.”

Thor sighs. 

“How are we going to do this?” Selvig asks, virtually bouncing with excitement. 

“Heimdall,” says Thor. “I am going to require a great deal of rope.”

☠☠☠

Fitting through a cannon door has possibly been the single most difficult task Thor has ever willingly assigned himself. Selvig and Heimdall do not have it any easier.

The coast of Africa is all but a smear on the horizon by the time they’ve wriggled their way into the gun gallery and snuck into the bilges. They opt to take cover in the stores, with the barrels of gunpowder and rum. Packing boxes filled with straw line the deck and Selvig runs his hands across the sides of them.

“It’s a textiles ship,” he concludes. “Goods from Britain.”

“Well,” Thor says, sitting down heavily, “it could have been a livestock vessel.”

“We will need to obtain food somehow,” Heimdall comments. “It will not be easy to steal enough to feed three men such as us.”

“I’ve gone for days on the sea without enough to eat,” Thor says, waving a hand carelessly. “On some days I eat only enough to feed a dormouse, Heimdall.”

Selvig frowns. It is clear, from the sheer girth of his waistline, that he is not a man of scarcity, especially not in food, but the conversation is cut short when footsteps are heard coming down the stairs in the storage decks. Thor throws himself down the staircase into the bilges, followed by Heimdall, while Selvig dives behind several substantial barrels of gunpowder. 

Heimdall wheezes as he lands on top of Thor, who claps a hand over Heimdall’s mouth to quiet his breathing. He then drags the both of them into the darkest corner of the bilges and they keep silent as footsteps stomp over the deck above them. Voices of men shout in clipped English. 

“Excuse me?”

Heimdall’s hand, clutched around Thor’s arm, tightens in surprise. Thor whips his head around, searching for the source of the words, so soft he would have sworn he imagined them if not of for the sudden tense of Heimdall’s muscles. Thor wishes dearly that he could have a sword in this very moment, because—

“Who are you?”

A figure emerges from the darkness of the other side of the ship. When it finally walks into the slats of light spilling in from the deck above, it turns into a woman with dark hair spilling down her back, wearing a dress so elaborate Thor can barely tell where the lace ends and the silk begins. She is beautiful, and she is not afraid. 

The light above dims when legs appear on the staircase and Thor scuttles backward, and Heimdall finds his feet as they crouch in the darkest of corners, behind a loose cannon. The woman stands at her full height and smooths down the front of her skirt. 

“Can I help you?” she asks. 

“I was asked to check on your Highness,” replies the man. Thor and Heimdall exchange confused glances. _Highness,_ the unsaid word hangs between them. “To see if your Highness was safe.”

“Quite safe, thank you Colonel Lester,” she says coldly. “I daresay your efforts will be more useful elsewhere on this vessel.”

“Ah—yes, your Highness.” There is a sound of shameful feet scurrying away, and when it is finally out of earshot, the woman throws one last look up the stairs and hurries to the corner where Thor and Heimdall haven’t moved an inch.

“Who are you?” she asks. “Because if you’re here to kill me, I promise you, I will kill you before you can even reach for your weapon.”

“I—we—” Thor says, struggling for words. “We were just, we were simply—we are—”

Heimdall offers him a withering look.

“We need a passage to the New World,” Thor manages. “We are not merchants, and we are not mercenaries. We are not here to kill you.”

“That’s what they all say,” she says, rolling her eyes. “‘We come with nothing but good intentions, Princess Jane, nothing but goodwill. Now you just be a good girl, and it won’t even have to hurt.’” She turns, fire in her eyes. “Yet none of them can ever prove that they’re not here to kill me.”

Thor stands up resolutely, and yanks the sleeve of his blouse back. The button pops off with a soft clack as it lands on the wood, and he walks forward into the dim light until the raised skin of his pirate brand is visible, white flesh taught against sunburnt. She stares down at it, chest heaving with breath.

“Pirate,” Thor says, yanking his sleeve down with an air of finality. “I have no interest in assassinating princesses.”

“We would...appreciate it greatly, Princess Jane,” Heimdall says, coming up behind Thor, “if you didn’t inform the crewmen of our presence. I can affirm that Captain Thor is not here for your life. He simply needs to make his way to the New World, and you just so happened to be on the same vessel as us. If it so pleases you, we will not cross paths with you again.”

Jane does not answer immediately. “Do what you will,” she says. “We are all prisoners on this ship, after all.”

☠☠☠

They find Selvig still curled into a ball on the storage deck some time later, and it seems that he’s found a box of preserved food. Rationing has never been one of Thor’s fortes, but fortunately, Heimdall keeps them both in check like a children’s tutor.

“Did they give you any trouble?” Thor asks, tearing into some jerky. 

“None of them even noticed me,” Selvig says, pouring some almonds into his cap. “Well, none of the men.”

“None of the men?” repeats Heimdall. “What do you mean?”

Selvig looks around, as if spooked, then leans in. “There’s a woman on this ship,” he whispers. “And you know what it means to have women on board, Captain.”

Heimdall makes a grunt of disapproval. Thor snorts. “You would do well to rid yourself of that notion, Selvig,” he says. “It was a woman who was one of my greatest friends and fiercest warriors. Who was it?”

“The only living princess of Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. Her mother was a Scottish princess like her, and her father is King George III. Or so she said,” Selvig replies. “She certainly looks the part. The question is, what on Earth is a princess doing on a Royal Navy trade ship? In the bilges, no less?”

“I wish I knew,” Thor says, shaking his head. “Heimdall, do you know who she is?”

“I don’t,” admits Heimdall. “Though I can say that she was telling the truth. She is a princess, and there have been attempts on her life. For what reason, I am not aware of either.”

A heavy silence rocks between them. “How long will this voyage be?” Thor decides to ask. 

“Two months, if the captain swift and knows where he is going,” Selvig says, tearing his dried fruit into bits. “We are in for a long sail, my friends.”

“I suppose we are fortunate to have boarded a trade vessel,” Thor laments. “Despite that it is entirely devoid of rum.”

“There is rum. It’s in the barrels with the gunpowder.”

The princess appears like a ghost. “Everything marked with an X across the top is gunpowder. Those that aren’t are either water or rum.” She seems smaller, slighter, and Thor realizes that she must have taken off the steel hoop that bolstered her skirts. 

“Why are you helping us?” Thor asks. 

“Because I heard you speaking earlier,” she replies, shrugging, and sitting down with them without invitation. “And it appears it was with genuine sincerity when you denied your intentions of slaughtering me.” She crosses her legs and Thor wonders if this is princess behavior, then decides he likes her carelessness. “Now. Why is there such a motley crew of stowaways on a Royal Navy ship? A pirate, an explorer, and a tribesman?”

“My story is a long one,” Thor says. 

“Well then,” says Jane, “it is my pleasure to tell you that I am fond of epic tales, Captain.”

☠☠☠

“A Pirate Lord with intentions of justice?”

Jane has taken off her tiny slippers and has her fingers hooked into the heels, swinging them as they walk through the gun deck. The hems of her dress, too long without the added height of her shoes, drag across the polished wood. “That is truly the first time I have heard of such a ludicrous thing, yet I can’t bring myself not to believe you.”

“Your faith in me is flattering,” Thor says. “I did not become Lord of the Baltic Sea by stealing the power, either. I was a natural successor after the death of the previous Lord.” He pauses. “After I pillaged his ship, but I did not kill him.”

“Hmm,” Jane hums. “I suppose you are still a pirate.”

“And you are awfully trusting of one, aren’t you,” comments Thor. “For a princess.”

Jane scoffs, but there is a smile on her lips. “As the only living heir of the British throne, I was raised like a son,” she explains. “Trained in combat, in swordwork, and in archery. I am not afraid of men, nor am I afraid of assassins. The only people I need to pay any mind to are traitors in the royal court.”

“Have there been traitors?”

“Of course, it’s the English court,” Jane says easily. “Many a poor girl has died in my place, tasting my food and water for me, testing my bathwater before I climb into it, God rest their souls.”

“So I assume that you are on this ship so that you may…”

“Disappear, yes. My father held a funeral for me, had me cremated...it was one of my ladies in waiting. Her ashes are lying in the tower where my bedroom is, in a carved casket with my name upon it. As much as he despises the uprising in the New World, he believes I’m safest there.”

“What a tragic fate you must suffer.”

“No,” Jane sits down beside a quiet cannon. The wood of the door creaks when as she props it open, and rolls the cannon away so that the sea and sky are visible. “No, I think I’ll quite enjoy being able to run free without having to worry about an axe in my back.” 

Thor follows suit. It feels nice to have the briny ocean breeze on his face again. He doesn’t sense the gaze Jane has trained on him momentarily before she stares out into the endless blue.

“You mustn’t be too accustomed to being shut away from the world, are you.”

“Not at all. I’ve always been at the helm, chasing a horizon.”

“Soon you will be.” Thor looks over in surprise when he feels her hand on his rough one. She is not looking at him, face illuminated pale and lunar by the moon. “Soon we both will.”

☠☠☠

Time, in darkness, loses its meaning.

Weeks pass in days, and sunrises melt into sunsets without much daylight in between. The moon who loves the sun so much cuts a bit of itself away each night to lend to her brightness comes back in full strength, then dies every dawn. 

For the most part, Thor and his company keep to themselves in the bilges, while Princess Jane has an armored room built in the stores deck especially for her. It is only at night, when the moon is high high high in the heavens that Thor dares venture into the higher decks of the galleon, but it is every night that Jane shows him something new.

Once he finds her sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, shooting at a sack of packed straw across the ship with bow and arrow. It’s marked with a large red X that Jane says she put there herself, because “what use is there for all this rouge on a ship full of men I care not for?”

“Really? Not a single one?”

“Hardly.”

“Not even me?”

Her aim falters at this question, just before she releases her arrow. It goes flying into a packing box, right through the slats of the planks, and Jane lowers her bow with her eyebrows raised at him. “Someone is going to have to explain those ripped bolts of fabric to merchants.”

“You care not even for me?”

Jane gets off her seat, and as tiny as she is, hardly coming up to Thor’s chin, she looks menacing. “Why? Does that offend you, Captain?”

“No,” Thor says, a faint smile on his lips. “I’d say you were smart.”

Jane props her bow against the floor. “Smart, you say.”

“You have a fire in you, Princess Jane of England, Ireland, and Scotland. It’s very admirable.”

The compliment catches her off guard. “Thank you, but you can just call me Jane,” she says. “You do as well, Captain.”

“You can just call me Thor.”

She chuckles.

“You have a fire in you as well, Thor,” says Jane, punching him lightly in the chest, “Pirate Lord of the Baltic Sea.”

☠☠☠

The worst decision Thor makes on board the HMS Newcastle, naturally, is made when both Selvig and Heimdall are asleep. It is also made, naturally, in conjunction with Jane’s persuasion, to which Thor has a crippling incapability of ignoring.

“It’ll be wonderful,” Jane says, voice pleading. She has one of Thor’s hands in both of hers as she whispers urgently. “None of the crewmen will be awake at this hour! It’s the perfect chance to feel the air on our skin, Thor.”

“You are not wrong, Jane, but…” Thor hesitates. “You are not even supposed to be alive, what if someone catches sight of you?”

“Honestly, Thor,” Jane says, leaning in, face suddenly very close to his, “do you think that any assassin would be looking for a women dressed in nothing but her petticoats without a skirt hoop, her hair undone like this? If I walked like this through the castle my father would have me caned on sight.”

Thor grimaces. “At least wear my cloak.”

This is how they find themselves leaning over the railing of the main deck, watching the bow of the ship slice through the water, seafoam dancing away from the hull in clouds of bubbles. The cloak is far too big for her and Thor keeps reaching over to tug the hood away from her face, even as she’s pointing down into the water at the ghostly dolphins streaking by alongside their ship. 

“Don’t stand so far over the edge, Princess,” he says. “I do not excel in water rescues wherein I have to conceal myself and save two lives.”

“You’re so nervous, Thor. It’s unlike you.”

“Imagine my misfortune if a Princess disappeared under my watch. You too would be nervous.”

Jane considers this. The fabric of her petticoats rustle as she rests her chin in her palms, propping her elbows upon the railing. Thor stares out at the expanse of water that’s become his home, and wonders if he is already too late to save it.

“Do you have any tales?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tales. Pirates have plenty, don’t they?”

“I doubt they would be of any interest to you.”

“Then tell me one of your stories about sea monsters,” Jane asks. “I know you have them.”

Thor leans out over the railing with Jane, feeling the chilly breeze lift his golden hair from his shoulders. “Do you know any stories of the draugr?”

Jane shakes her head. 

“The draugr is an animated corpse of the dead. They are not like ghosts, not transparent wisps of smoke. They are just like the living, but undead, and can make themselves grow to the size of the feared Kraken. Sailors say that they’re the lost souls of those who die at sea while sitting in a chair, or tied to the mast.”

“What do they do?”

“Prey on ships, pirate and merchant alike,” says Thor. “They guard their treasures deep below the sea, and wreak havoc on the living. They hunt most on foggy nights, appear from the mist like bad dreams. The only way to distinguish their presence is the smell. Oh, the smell,” Thor shakes his head. “It’s hellish.”

“You say that they are the undead, of the once living?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps they were wronged,” Jane murmurs. “They were human, once, too.”

“And that is the greatest tragedy of them all, I’m afraid.”

“Once their mothers must have loved them,” Jane says, nearly inaudible over the babbling of the water. “Their fathers, their brothers, their sisters...a woman.” She, too, shakes her head. “What a pity it is to die alone, and be alone even after that.”

“You speak with such a heavy heart.”

“All my life I’ve waited to die alone, murdered in my bed,” Jane says. “Like my mother.”

There isn’t any sadness or regret in her voice. It sounds hollow, resigned, and Thor almost subconsciously shuffles closer. 

“You won’t die alone, Jane,” he says. “You’ll be safe.”

Thor knows this is an empty promise, and he expects her to laugh at it, call him naive and shouldn’t a Pirate Lord know better that life is a fragile, fragile thing? But she doesn’t—all she does is drop her head onto his shoulder, heavy and tired. 

“Thank you.”

A comfortable silence settles over them. Thor is just about to suggest that it may be a good idea to go back into the bilges, as the sun will rise soon, when he hears a furious shout from high above. Immediately following, a hot pain explodes in his shoulder.

“Intruder!” comes the high-pitched shout. Jane whirls to peer up into the sails where a watchman appears to have just recently woken up. He turns to grabs a rope to let himself down, and Thor snatches the chance to dive down into the gun decks, tumbling down the staircase into the stores and, finally, the bilges. He drags himself into the darkest corner he can find and presses a hand into the pulsing pain at his upper arm, and his heart sinks when he feels warm blood pooling in between his fingers. 

“Thor!”

It’s Selvig. His grey hair is wild about his face, and Thor hisses in pain when his hand touches the wound. “Thor, you need to stay quiet, are you—oh God, you’re hurt, stay quiet, stay _quiet—_ ”

Thor clamps his teeth down on the inside of his mouth as he lets Selvig pull him into the corner of the bilges, and Heimdall arrives, a little more than a shape and golden eyes. “What were you thinking?” he demands in a hushed voice. “You have a mission once we see land again, Thor, and don’t you forget it. What use would have this all been if you were killed on a blasted Royal Navy ship at the hands of a couple of redcoats?” His eyebrows knit together. “What were you doing up on the main deck?”

They tense when a lone sailor peeks down the staircase. He passes a cursory, sweeping glance and shouts, “All clear in the bilges, captain!”

“Is the princess safe?”

“I told you, he jumped overboard,” comes Jane’s exasperated voice, and Thor can’t help but smile through his pain. “And even if he didn’t, I could catch him myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, your Highness. Where did you acquire that cloak?”

There is a deadly silence, and then a gurgle of fear. “You question a princess’s possessions?”

“N-no, your Highness, of course not, I—”

“Good,” says Jane. “Now after these events, I will ask all of you to not disturb me for the rest of the night and day, and to not be followed unless I call for any of you.”

“Yes, your Highness, of—of course.”

The footsteps grow fainter and fainter. Thor feels his head swim when Jane finally comes sweeping into the corner where they are hiding, a parcel in her hands and her hair windblown. 

“He’s lost of lot of blood,” Heimdall says. “The bullet may still be lodged in his flesh.”

“Then it is good that I have been schooled in medical care, yes?” Jane says, and even with his vision blurring Thor can tell her hands are trembling. “Thor—Thor, stay with me, I need you to stay awake. I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, please stay awake…”

When the world darkens, Thor swears that her face glows.

☠☠☠

Coming to aboard a ship has always been a very odd, out-of-body thing to experience, because while Thor’s head still feels submerged underwater, his entire body rocks to the waves of the ocean. His head is pillowed on something that feels like suede, or corduroy, and when he realizes where he is, he tries to sit up.

“It seems that most of our relationship is comprised of you waking up on my watch,” comes Heimdall’s soothing voice, and Thor feels himself smile. The muscles of his face are strained and when he reaches out to support himself, a white-hot pain shoots up his arm. 

Ah, yes, the gunshot wound. Jane. Everything comes back in a rush.

“You gave a us a monumental scare back there, Captain,” Selvig says. “What were you thinking? You could have been—”

He falls quiet when Heimdall holds up his hand. “Captain Thor, I just want to remind you that you’re a man with a mission, and a Pirate Lord that is looking to save the seas and stop his brother. You have no business with a princess.”

Thor leans back against the damp wood, pulling his tailored pirate’s jacket out from where he’d be lying on it, and closes his eyes again. “I shouldn’t have agreed to going on deck.”

“It isn’t either of your faults. She’s been saying it’s hers for asking you. Don’t let it become a pointless, vicious cycle of self-pity and blame,” Heimdall chastises.

“Has she said anything to you?”

Heimdall and Selvig look uncomfortable. “She has asked that you not see her again for the remainder of this voyage,” Selvig pipes up meekly. “That you would be safer, and that she would not raise any more suspicion. The men of the Royal Navy are not convinced with her story of how you allegedly threw yourself overboard, as they saw no body in the ocean.”

“So it is so,” Thor murmurs.

“There is still Mjolnir,” says Heimdall, “and the God of Thunder, and the war for Pirate King. You have much to look forward to, Captain.”

“Yes,” Thor agrees, yet somehow he cannot bring himself to truly believe it in his heart.

☠☠☠

Time, without Jane, turn into one long sunlit dream.

Some nights Thor is the last one awake, Heimdall and Selvig snoring against the sacks of straw as Thor opens up one of Selvig’s maps and traces the threads with his fingers by the light of a kerosene lamp. Others, he sleeps and drinks and wakes up without a clue how many days have passed, how many sunrises he has missed. 

One one particularly late night, Heimdall wakes to find Thor absently sketching a drawing of draugrs descending upon the Demigod. He watches him for a long time before he makes his presence known.

“Do not fear the dead, Thor,” Heimdall says, eyes expressionless. “Fear the living.”

☠☠☠

“We’re almost there.”

Thor, who is changing the gauze and bandages around his arm himself, looks up to see Heimdall sitting down beside him and a slumbering Selvig. “I heard the men talking abovedecks just earlier. Captain says if with Lady Luck on our side and minimal fog in the harbor, we should make port by morning.”

“We will be strangers in a strange land, Heimdall,” Thor says, “I must confess that I am apprehensive about this all. What if the other Pirate Lords know nothing of Loki’s plans?”

“Be reasonable, Captain,” Heimdall says. “Of course they will know nothing of Loki’s plans, and such will work perfectly to his plans. He cannot call a meeting of the brethren court without all Nine Pirate Lords, yet he cannot declare you dead unless you died in front of his very eyes. And until then, no one can take your place and he can seize power of the Pirate King unquestioned. It is only when you appear to challenge him in the position will you need to alert the others to be your allies.”

Thor chuckes under his breath. “Heimdall, Heimdall,” he says. “Where would I be without your wise soul.”

“Still lost at sea, floating on the pieces of your broken ship, I’ll daresay.”

“All my friends were on that ship,” Thor says. Heimdall reaches over to help him tie off the bandage around his deltoid. “They were great warriors. I cannot bring myself to believe that they were all claimed by the ocean.”

“Perhaps they weren’t. You said yourself that they were warriors. Do not have so little faith, Thor.”

“They were always the ones who made sure I didn’t get into trouble that I couldn’t fight my way out of. And, even if I did, they were always there to help me.” Thor sighs. “I can’t help but feel at fault.”

There’s a loud thud from above them and Selvig snuffles in his sleep, then shifts to his side, smacking his lips. Thor begins clearing away the medicine supplies splayed out on the terrycloth. 

“Was it their choice to come on this voyage with you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are not at all at fault,” Heimdall concludes. “They walked into this fight with—”

There’s another thud, fainter this time, punctuated with a furious shriek. “Stop! Stop, get _off_ me, you filthy—stop!”

It is Jane’s voice. Thor jackknifes to his feet, but Heimdall grabs his wrist in a bruising grip. 

“You mustn’t,” he warns. “You can’t go storming into the crewmen’s quarters, they’ll all know of our presence here!”

“I don’t care,” Thor says, shaking him off. “I can fight.”

“So can Jane,” says Heimdall. Their raised voices rouse Selvig, who immediately can tell that something must be amiss, as he asks no questions. “She made it very clear she could have us strung like game before we could even lay a hand on her.”

Thor hesitates then, until another scream pierces the air and rains in needles into the bilges. “Stop— _stop, you bastard!”_

He tears out of the corner they hide in, through the stores and the gun gallery, taking the stairs two at a time. The last time Thor had been this close to the main deck had been the night he was shot, and he hadn’t paid attention to the anatomy of the galleon ship. Blood thunders through his ears and his breath rushes in and out of his lungs, drowning out all other sound. 

_“Get off me!”_

The lone shout is enough for Thor to follow and he grabs the doorknob of the chamber where it came from. He grunts, tightening his fist around it and twisting with all his might until the frail metal gives under his fingers. With a bang, he kicks the door down. 

“Jane!”

The room is lit dimly with only the light of a kerosene lamp, and Thor—in his dark red pirate’s jacket and black cravat—fills up the entire doorway, half human, half shadow. The Royal Navy man has Jane pinned down on his bed by the wrists, her bow and quiver of arrows strewn across the floor. His face transforms into one of horror when he lays eyes on Thor’s countenance.

“Thor,” Jane says, chest heaving. “Get out of here.”

“Of course, Princess,” Thor says, hot anger pulsing through his temples. He pulls out his last and only weapon, the pistol that had survived the storm. “As you wish.”

“Intruder! Pirate!” the man shouts at the top of his squeaky lungs, and Thor recognizes his voice—this must be Colonel Lecter. He raises the barrel of the gun and fires off one shot easily right between the man’s eyes, and the colonel jerks back, body convulsing, and lands in a heap on the floor. 

Delicately, Thor steps over the body and pulls Jane onto her feet, trying hard not to look at the undone laces of her dress. The cloak he had given her is slung carelessly over a chair and he hands it to her. 

“Here,” he says. “We don’t have much time from here on out.”

“I’m sorry?” Jane says, gathering her arrows and bow into her arms. She hears the urgency in Thor’s voice. Just then, Selvig and Heimdall appear in the doorway as well, and stare uncomprehendingly at the Royal Navy soldier lying in a rapidly darkening pool of his own blood.

“To the boats?” Heimdall asks.

“To the boats,” Thor says firmly, taking Jane’s hand. They hardly make it ten feet before they hear feet and more yells. 

“Pirates on board! Secure the princess!”

A puny soldier runs up to them, sword at the ready, and Thor takes him out with a swift punch to the side of the head. He pulls Jane in front of him and puts her hand in Heimdall’s. 

“Get to the boats,” he says. “I’ll catch up with you.”

“It’s not safe,” Jane protests. “I can help you.”

“If you die,” says Thor, “I will not see another sunrise.”

Jane looks ready to argue, but Heimdall nods and she instead she says, “Don’t be long.” 

She disappears up the staircase with Heimdall to the main deck, and Thor bends down to grab the sword that rolled out of the soldier’s grasp. He turns, only to be faced with the entire crew of the HMS Newcastle.

“Pirate,” one of them sneers. “You’ll never get away with that girl. She fights tooth and nail.”

“She is not,” Thor says, tapping the man’s nose with the top of his sword, “a girl. She is a storm with skin.”

Thor lunges, and the soldier chokes as blood sheets down his throat. His comrades stare in horror when his body hits the floor to join the one unconscious, before they utter a truly terribly battle cry and run for Thor. He leaps onto the staircase to the main deck, and makes a beeline for where the boats are tied—Selvig is lowering them slowly into the ocean. 

“Faster!” Thor shouts. He pulls his pistol on the men again and shoots a round into them, bullet shell landing at his feet. The ones who are hit fall back and it buys Thor a little more time to get across the deck unscathed. His belly hits the railing and he shoves the sword in his belt. There’s still some distance from the water, but Jane stands up suddenly, loads her bow, and shoots at something with deadly precision just over Thor’s shoulder. The boat rocks where it is suspended in midair, and Thor turns to see a soldier falling back behind him, screaming, an arrow run through his eye. 

“Thor, hurry!” Selvig titters, and Thor braces a hand on the railing and launches himself over the side of the ship. The ropes groans when he lands in the small boat with them, Jane’s hands steadying him, and Thor reaches for his gun, firing more bullets into the heads of the men who dare lean across the side.

“Blackwall! Hampton! They’re kidnapping the princess!” 

Thor grits his teeth and pulls out the sword again.

“Everyone grab on,” he says, and slices through the rope tying the boat to the Newcastle. For a second Thor feels it fall out from under him, but then he plummets with them, a short distance, thankfully, and the hull hits the water with a mighty splash.

“Start rowing!”

Thor, with the unerring skill of a man who has been a pirate since he knew how to breathe, has succeeded in getting them into the boats fast enough for Heimdall’s rowing to suffice before the other English vessels wake up to shoot at them. The dingy rocks with the weight of three grown men and a Scottish princess, but by the time the horizon has started to lighten, first a dove grey, then a shellfish pink, the trio of Royal Navy ships has faded into the endless expanse of ocean. 

“How far from shore?” Selvig asks. He hasn’t let go of his armful of maps since they escaped. Jane is asleep against his shoulder, swaddled in Thor’s black cloak. Thor himself fights a yawn, though histurn in rowing has kept him awake well enough.

He reaches for his compass and sees that the arrow quivers on its dial. The glass casing is cracked, no doubt from the altercation, and asks, “Heimdall, do you see land?”

Heimdall, with his back to them, leans forward and shades his eyes. “Captain, I have to say I in fact do. It’s quite faint in this fog, but I see it.”

“Do you see any sails along it?”

“If my eyes do not lie to me,” Heimdall replies, “indeed I do, Captain.”

Thor smiles, still rowing, wrists sore. “Then, my friends,” he says, “welcome to the New World.”

☠☠☠

Boston is, as promised, a new world entirely.

The marketplace is teeming with people, women and children and men alike, some in clothes of creams and beiges and others—men, mostly—in lobster red jackets and severe black boots, marching through the city with bayonets on their shoulders. Thor and his company attract many a curious stare and whisper behind the hand as they stride through the dusty streets, looking very out of place. Chatter flies between women and more than once Thor finds himself nearly tripping over children that chase each other between stands of food.

“—dozens of filthy redcoats around the house, hovering outside the window like bloodhounds, practically salivating for a reason to arrest me.” Thor catches the last few words just as he knocks into someone’s basket and sends a handful of apples rolling away down the street. He stops, and Jane, with the hood of her cloak up around her head, is jerked back when she realizes he’s halted.

“Sir!” he shouts, thinking how strange it is that a man is acquiring food for the day. “You dropped something!” He reaches down, gathering the fallen fruit in his hands—but when he stands up, he looks into the face of a woman.

“Thank you,” she says. As he straightens, he notes her buttoned vest, the white cravat at her neck, the breeches and gold-buckled shoes of a man’s wardrobe. Her friend—whom Thor is quite certain is genuinely a man—takes off his hat to show short, cropped hair.

Boston is truly a bizarre place.

“Sorry, sir,” he says, in an accent Thor has never quite encountered; it’s clipped and hard around the edges—not quite the soft English he is accustomed to hearing. “Peggy is always zealous in her conversation with me, we didn’t mean to run into you. I’m Steve—Steve Rogers.”

“Not at all, Steve,” Thor says, dropping the dusty apples in her basket. Steve’s eyes dart between him, Jane, and Selvig and Heimdall, expression a little puzzled before he asks,

“You are not from around here?”

“No, we are not,” Thor says. “We’re actually here for business, in fact, I’m looking for a hammer called Mjol—”

“That’s quite enough sharing for today, Thor, let’s go,” Selvig says, cutting in and attempting to steer Thor’s body, twice his size, away from the colonists. “We have work to do.”

“Wait,” says Peggy. “A hammer called what?”

Thor looks down at Selvig, then at Peggy. “Mjolnir.”

“Oh, Mjolnir! Or Myuh-myuh, as Darcy likes calling it. We know what it is.”

Thor blinks dumbly at them. “Do you?”

“It’s a legend,” Peggy says, and they fall into step beside her and Steve. “A rectangular hammer put here by the gods themselves, a symbol of permanence. Some say it is a sign that it is our destiny to live here.” She speaks with the soft Victorian accent that Thor is so used to. “Planted in the center of New England, and has been there ever since beginning of time.”

“Could you direct me towards Mjolnir?” Thor asks eagerly. “I must see it.”

“That hammer is a day’s travel from here,” Peggy says. “And you, good sir, appear to be bleeding quite terribly from that wound. You won’t make it ten miles out of this city.”

“I have been dealt worse,” Thor says, but he feels a sharp jab in his arm from Heimdall’s elbow. He looks at him in irritation, but when Heimdall nods in Jane’s direction, he understands.

“You know these parts better than we do,” Thor says carefully. “Forgive me for asking—but would you be so kind to lend us shelter until then?”

They seem to hesitate, Peggy especially, until Heimdall quips, “Jane is an excellent markswoman and hunter.”

☠☠☠

“Steve,” Thor says, watching him bustle around the store that he owned, “why does Madam Carter don men’s clothes?”

“You can just call her Peggy, you know,” says Steve as he unpacks another box of fabrics, hauling them across the store to organize them into their shelves. “And Peggy is—well, she has big ideas. She’s quite the advocate for the revolution.”

“Revolution?”

Steve chuckles as he arranges several stray bolts of linen, balancing precariously on a ladder. “You really aren’t from around here, are you, Thor.”

“I’m afraid I’m not.”

“The American Revolution,” Steve says, “is a grand idea that we have cooked up, that we colonists are no longer part of Great Britain. That’s why there are so many redcoats in the streets, you see. The crown isn’t taking well to our uprising.” He climbs down from his ladder. “I don’t stock their tea in my store anymore. They tax us high prices and don’t listen to a word we say. It’s unjust.”

“It is.”

Steve opens another box. “What about you, Thor?” he asks. “Certainly isn’t an English name. What swashbuckling adventures have brought you here, so adamant on seeing a hammer?”

Thor stills, and unconsciously tugs down the sleeve of his branded wrist. “I have a mission,” he says quietly. “A mission to protect everything that I’ve ever known.”

Steve follows his gaze out the window, where Jane is letting the children of the vegetable stand across the street hide in her black cloak, laughing as they run around in the heavy folds of cloth. When one of them falls unceremoniously onto his hands and begins to cry, she picks him up gently and sets him back on his feet. She straightens, and meets Thor’s gaze; her laugh fades until it is just the faintest smile.

“She your friend?”

Thor jumps, and turns back to Steve, who has a knowing look in his eyes. 

“Yes,” he says. “A very dear friend.” Until he figures out whether this Steve can be trusted, he’s keeping the origins of Jane’s birth a secret.

“Well, why don’t you and your dear friend go inside and have dinner and wash up,” Steve says. “You’ve got a hammer to see.”

“Dinner? For all of us?”

“Don’t worry. Bucky’s a right good man in the kitchen.” Steve frowns as he opens his last box of fabrics and pulls out three bolts of torn cotton, and if Thor is not mistaken, he swears he sees splinters of an arrow shaft caught in between them. “Unbelievable. I can’t believe they shipped us subpar fabrics and expect us to pay the tariffs for this.”

Thor catches Jane’s amused, horrified expression through the storefront window and has to fight down the laugh that bubbles in his throat.

☠☠☠

Bucky is as much a gentleman as Steve, if not one even more charming. His hair is shoulder length and loose around his face, in a more familiar fashion, and he asks no questions when they all sit down at the table for a dinner larger than Thor has seen in, quite literally, months.

“Peggy says you’ve traveled a long way to come see Myuh-myuh,” says the girl named Darcy, whom Jane has taken a liking to very quickly. “What’s got you so fascinated with it that you look like you trekked through the Himalayas to see it?”

Thor glances at Selvig and Heimdall, who both seem at a loss for passable lies. He struggles for the words, some he’s heard in the imperial cities of Europe, and throws together what he hopes sounds intelligent: “I want to study the physics of Mjolnir.” 

If he’s lucky, physics applies to weapons.

“Physics?” Bucky asks, raising his eyebrows. “Are you here to see Mr. Parker?”

“I’m not acquainted with any sons of Parker,” Thor says. “But I’d—I’d love to speak with him about physics, yes.”

Heimdall gives him a look that says, _for a Pirate Lord, you are terrible at deception._

“Peter!” Bucky shouts, not looking up from slicing his pot roast, “there’s a Lord Odinson here looking for you!”

From what sounds like three floors above is a mighty clang and a thud, and Thor follows the thumping across the ceiling with his eyes until a young man, younger even than Steve, appears at the top of the staircase. His gold-framed spectacles are awry on the bridge of his nose, and he stops short at the sight of so much company at the dinner table.

“Uh, hello,” he says. “To whom may I owe the pleasure?”

“Sit down, Peter, you haven’t eaten dinner properly for days, always trapped up there tinkering with your chemistry set,” says Peggy. “Lord Thor Odinson has a few questions for you.”

“Oh,” Peter says, descending down the steps. “Is this about the explosion the other night, Lord—”

“You can just call me Thor, please, and no, I’m not from around here,” says Thor. “I actually have some things I want to ask about your local, er, treasure? Mjolnir, the hammer. Physics.”

“Physics of Mjolnir?” Peter’s face lights up as he pulls up a chair, and Steve slides a plate of food over to him. “What do you know about it?”

“Nothing, actually,” and Thor feels his face flush when he senses Jane trying not to laugh beside him. “I was wondering if you could enlighten me.”

“Peter here is one of the most brilliant physicists of our age,” Bucky remarks. “Came all the way to the New World with us to study and to make sure we didn’t do anything stupid, then goes and get himself bitten by spiders the first week we land.”

“Don’t,” Peter says, scuffing Bucky’s leg under the table with his foot. “Well, you know that the hammer Mjolnir is immovable, yes?” 

“I have heard.”

“Around here, we do all our heaviest building with the help of horses and the strongest oxen we can trade for,” Peter says. “If the horses can’t do it, the oxen can. There has never been anything too heavy for those beasts, except that hammer. Once the men of the village strung six of them to that hammer, and not a millimeter did it budge. Some say it’s the work of gods. Some say it’s science.”

“Science?”

“The idea that I myself had is that Mjolnir is not heavy,” Peter explains, picking up his fork and knife, brandishing them both as he gestures with his hands. “It is that Mjolnir is an immovable part of the universe, and that we—the world, and the universe—move around it instead.”

Thor stares blankly at him. Beside him, Jane laughs at something Bucky says, and Darcy chips in with her high, sharp voice. “I’m not sure I quite understand you, Peter.”

“You’re a sailor, yes?”

“I am.”

“Imagine at Mjolnir is the point at which you anchor your boat,” Peter says, resting the tines of his fork against the table. “Your ship is the rest of the world—it moves around that point, but that point itself never budges.” He scrapes the tip of his knife in a circle around the fork.

“So that hammer,” Thor says slowly. “Is not so much an object as it is…”

“A center of space and time, yes,” Peter finishes. “It’s a terribly difficult thing to wrap your mind around, I’m aware, but it’s only an idea.”

“No, it’s a splendidly thought-out idea,” Thor says, somewhat dazed. “Physics is fascinating, Peter Parker.”

☠☠☠

Later, when the sun is set and the day is done with, Jane sits down beside Thor on the uneven stone porch outside the household. She is wearing Peggy’s colonial men’s clothes. It’s disorienting to see her in anything but a cloak or a dress.

“You seemed very absorbed with what Peter was saying at dinner,” she says. “Did he give you anything of value?”

“Not as you’d expect,” Thor says, drawing lines in the dirt with a long kindling twig. “But yes, and it has made this mission all the more daunting.” He sighs. “Picking up that hammer, Jane, is asking to move the cosmos. _Enchanted by Calypso herself to be immovable by none except one who is worthy._ The legend told no lies, it seems.”

“You’re nervous again, Thor. And this time, no princess is disappearing on your watch.” Jane laughs. “She’s already done that.”

Thor chuckles. “Oh, if the King knew. He’d have my head delivered on a silver platter.”

“He probably already does,” Jane says lightly. “But somehow I doubt they will be searching for me in the New World. Our strategists are not exactly the brightest. They’ll be looking for me in the West Indies, most likely, and even then they’ll only find abandoned islands.”

“How do you know so much of sailing?”

“I’m the only living child of the throne, remember?” Jane says. “The job of a princess isn’t simply wearing dresses and holding parties, Thor, that’s the easy part. The only difference between princes and princesses is that we’re expected to look beautiful while slaughtering others.”

“It’s ludicrous,” Thor says, “how much your monarchies look down on women. The Pirate Lord of the Caspian Sea, Captain Natasha Romanov, is possibly the deadliest sailor in the Eastern Hemisphere. Even so, against Loki…”

“Are you scared?”

“Of Loki? He’s my brother.”

“Not of Loki,” Jane says. “But of failure.”

Thor quirks one side of his lips.

“I’m sure we are all afraid of failure, Jane.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

The twig snaps in Thor fingers and he watches the splinters scatter on the ground beneath him. “They say you die twice, Jane. Once, when your heart stops beating and your body perishes. Twice, when someone says your name for the very last time.” He exhales. “When my father died, he died twice at once. No one remembers captains for long, Jane. That’s just how it is with pirates. Life is fast and fleeting, and more often than not, has no happy endings.”

From down the street, there’s a mighty commotion as a dog gets into the butcher’s chicken coop. Jane crosses her legs and reaches over so that her fingers are splayed over Thor’s knuckles.

“Well,” she begins, “as someone who’s lived her whole life with a sword hanging by a thread over her head, I’ve learned one thing, between all the French lessons, all the violin lessons, all the embroidery lessons. It’s that the goal of life isn’t to forge happy endings, Thor.” She squeezes his hand and smiles, albeit a little sadly. “It’s to build a world where happy endings are inevitable.”

☠☠☠

Dawn breaks gracelessly over the harbor.

The market is already bustling, as is the house; everyone seems to be up even just as the sun starts spilling over the horizon. Thor makes his way down to the first floor to find Steve already outside, four horses reigned and saddled. Selvig is leaning on a pale palomino mare, dozing off, while Heimdall is scrutinizing a map of Boston with intense yellow eyes. 

“I thought you might need some directions getting around on land,” Steve says, shading his eyes. “Unless, of course, you know exactly how to find it.”

“I’m afraid not,” Thor says. “Are you able to simply abandon your responsibilities for your…” He gestures towards the house awkwardly.

“Family? It’s no big deal. Peter can do my chores for one day, it won’t kill him,” Steve says, mounting his horse. “If we’re fast, we’ll be back at dusk.” 

“Wait!”

Thor turns to see Jane in the doorway, bow and arrow slung over her back. Her hair is braided and pinned against her head in the same way Peggy’s is, and she steps down into the yard before she realizes there’s only enough horses for four.

“I wanted to come with you.”

“Your journey has already ended, Jane,” says Thor, and he curls his fingers around her upper arms. He lowers his voice before leaning in. “Even with your archery skill, it’s not safe. No one may know you here, but we can’t take any chances. Besides, you heard Steve—I’ll be back before the end of the day.”

There is conflict in Jane’s eyes momentarily before the words sink in and she sighs, nodding. Thor smiles, but just as he’s about to back away, she takes his hand, pulls him in, and stretches up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. 

It’s warm. Thor catches her when she stumbles, wrapping his arms around her waist and picking her up slightly so that she needn’t bend her head so far back to reach him. After several moments, or perhaps several eternities, she breaks away. For a second she struggles with her words, and settles on, 

“Don’t be long.” It’s but a whisper.

The other three don’t quite meet Thor’s eyes when he mounts his horse. Steve, however, looks all too triumphant about something. 

They make their way down the streets, townspeople staring curiously. They ride in silence for a while, until the horses are treading across the soft grass of forest and Steve says, “They’re the only family I have. My parents were Loyalists and stayed behind to defend the crown, then both died of tuberculosis. I met Bucky first, estranged son of Loyalists, too. Then we found Peggy working in the town council houses, arguing louder than any of the men in there.” 

“What about Darcy and Peter?”

“Peter, officially, is an apprentice of my store,” Steve says, “though I’m sure he’d sooner blow it up than run it, and Darcy came here on the request of her late husband, or so she says. She likes telling stories.” He shrugs. “I don’t know, Thor. They’re my family, I found them all on my own. It’s little and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.” 

“Must be nice to have a home to go to.”

“You always speak so somberly,” Steve jokes. “Who are you anyway, Thor? You made it pretty clear you had a mission, but who are you? Really?”

“Oh, I’m...son of a duke, really unimportant, entirely unknown,” Thor lies. “One of many sons, my father really has no use for me at all.”

“So you’re out here exploring the Americas alone?”

“Not alone,” Thor says, sweeping a hand at Heimdall, whose eyebrows go up, and a dozing Selvig. “I have my friends.”

“And Jane?”

“And Jane.”

The air grows hot and thick as the sun peaks on their journey, and for much of the rest of the way they ride single file through the buzzing forests. Squirrels dart out of their path as they pass and Thor, for the first time in forever, gets a chance to appreciate the more legged, winged creatures of the earth. It’s a change to be surrounded by fields of grass and wheat. 

Just as the sun has start to fall a little from the center of the sky, Steve turns around from the front of the line and says, “We’re almost there!”

This part of the forest is oddly quiet, the peacefulness disquieting, even. There’s still a low hum suspended throughout the air, and just as Thor is about to comment on how strong it is, the sound vibrating through his chest, Steve turns his mare to the side as they arrive in a rocky clearing. 

Mjolnir is embedded in a tower of rock, as though the ground had sunken away from it in the years and years it had seen pass. All around it are trinkets and treasures, left behind as if this were a mass tomb. The humming here is so loud that it nearly hurts Thor’s ears, and he wonders how Steve and the others aren’t bothered, hardly even seeming to notice. 

“People leave behind offerings to it and ask for answers and help,” Steve says as Thor dismounts. “Though the effectiveness of it is questionable, I’ve heard.”

The sky seems to darken through the leaves of the trees as Thor steps over the things people have left behind—gold, jewels, he even sees a beaten rag doll lying against a chipped porcelain bowl. Once he might have thought to gather everything even remotely of value, but the thrumming sound has grown to a throb now, and even as he reaches forward to touch the handle of the hammer, the very air around it seems to pulse with energy. 

“What are you doing?” Steve asks. The wind is starting to pick up, and Selvig makes a noise of surprise as his hat is snagged by the breeze and swirled away over the treetops. “No one can lift that thing.”

“I just—” Thor doesn’t finish, and turns back to the hammer, staring at the handle, wrapped in red. The clouds are swirling, thunderous and grey, just over their heads, and dead leaves rush past them with the sound of rattling bones.

Thor reaches down and closes his fingers around the handle. When he does, finally, the thrum ceases and the air is still for a quiet second before he lifts it, the weapon weighing hardly anything in his grasp. Pebbles cascade in showers to his feet. Thor raises it over his head, as if his arm is being pulled, and—

The sky is split by white light, and behind him, the other three are thrown to the ground by the force of the swirling winds. Thunder rolls across the clouds. The lightning gathers in an electric web above them and comes racing down like acid rain, hitting the surface of Mjolnir with a boom. It crackles over the metal and only with difficulty does Thor wrench his arm away from the electric surge, the light fading when he does. When it clears, he’s staring up into a dreary rain shower, and the stone around them is dark and wet. 

“What in merciful hell was that?” Selvig grumbles, picking himself up and beating the dust out of his cravat. His hat is dangling from a tree branch some fifty feet in the air. 

Steve brings his arm away from his face, slowly, and his cheeks are dusted with dirt. He stares up at Thor, who walks toward them with hammer in hand, and asks, 

“You’re not really a forgotten son of a duke, are you?”

☠☠☠

The ride back into town is far more eventful, and far rainier, than the departure from it. Every townsperson takes one look at the hammer dangling by its loop from Thor’s arm and shouts to the row of vendors down the block that the impossible has happened.

“He’s picked up Mjolnir!”

“Impossible, child, that hammer is enchan—may the gods be—”

“Mjolnir? He picked up _the_ Mjolnir?”

“There won’t be a pirate in those waters that doesn’t know your name,” Heimdall comments blandly. “The second the ocean spits that ship back out every Lord will be sailing for Shipwreck Island to ask the meaning of this.”

“And when the time comes,” Thor says, “they will get their answers.”

When they near Steve’s house, the back door bangs open. Bucky is the first to tumble out, followed by Peggy, then Peter, then Darcy and Jane. Peter is gaping unabashedly, glasses in their perched in their perpetual crooked way over the bridge of his nose, while Peggy has a hand over her mouth. 

Thor swings his leg over his horse and dismounts, holding up the hammer as he approaches. He cannot fight the smile that takes over his face when Jane laughs in disbelief, running towards him in the muddy street and throwing her arms around his neck. 

“Bucky, Darcy,” Steve says, dismounting as well, “how long until dinner?”

“We’ve just started cooking, we didn’t expect you for another hour at least.”

“Good,” Steve says, clapping a hand over Thor’s shoulder. “Because we’re seating a Pirate Lord at our table tonight.” He looks cryptically at Thor, then Jane, and says, “You also owe me ten shillings, mate. Pay up.” 

He steps around them and gathers Peggy into a hug. Darcy and Bucky both stare at Thor with shell-shocked expressions, eyes wide, and he nods.

“Hi,” he says sheepishly.

☠☠☠

The sky over the southernmost tip of Chile darkens, unannounced, and a lone watchman is startled out of his doze when a thunderclap booms over his head. He straightens his hat, and stares out into the open water as lightning streaks through blackening clouds. A single bolt strikes the surface of the water.

“Captain Fury!” he shouts. “There’s something out there!”

The captain of the ship lurches over to the rail. He squints with his one good eye across the ocean where a whirlpool is deepening, darkening into a maelstrom, and a terrible sucking sound, like a drain has opened on the sea floor, reaches his ears.

“What in sweet Calypso’s name...” mutters Fury as the top of a ship’s mast appears from the water. “It can’t be.”

☠☠☠

After that, it becomes too hard to explain away the things that make Thor the Pirate Lord of the Baltic, his intentions, Heimdall’s origins, and who Jane really is. At the same time, Thor trusts Steve, and Bucky, and the rest of his eccentric family more than any civilian he’s ever met, especially when Peggy closes the door in the faces of priests that come knocking at their door, claiming that the Devil resides in their house.

The rest of the town seems to regard Thor as a god himself for having been able to wield Mjolnir. People actually bow to him when he passes them on the streets, accompanying Darcy and Jane to the marketplace, or when he goes in and out of Steve’s store. Sometimes, terrified mothers bring him their children dying of pneumonia, or bronchitis, and beg to let them set it beside Mjolnir if even for an hour. Even at the of their time together Thor notes they always do carry away children that have significantly more color in their cheeks, rousing when their mother pick them up again.

“You’re becoming a household name,” Jane says one day as Thor waves a goodbye at a mother who is pulling back the blankets of a baby who’s beginning to cry when it had been deathly silent just the day before. “Lord Thor, healer of the gods. Captain Thor Odinson, Pirate Lord of the Baltic Sea. Your titles are starting to pile up.”

He smiles softly down at her. The light in her eyes dims a little when she registers the discouragement in his. 

“Still no new ships in the harbor?”

Thor shakes his head. Jane reaches up, resting the palm of her hand against Thor’s cheek, and he leans into her touch. “Wait,” she says. “You are dealing with legends. Legends only come to be with time, it is only natural for them to unfold slowly. Mjolnir is a legend too, remember that.”

“It’s been weeks, Jane,” Thor says. “What if the God of Thunder is but a myth, not even legend?”

“Myth comes from legend,” Jane says. “And legends come from stories, which come from truths. You must have patience, Thor.”

Thor turns his face so he can press his lips into the palm of Jane’s hand. “Princess Jane, always so optimistic,” he mumbles. 

“It’s hard not to be,” Jane says, “when I don’t need a shadow following me everywhere, testing every surface I touch.”

“You look very at home,” Thor agrees. He nods at the flowers braided into the pleats around the base of Jane’s neck. “Darcy?”

“As usual,” she says. “I think Peggy needs to put a tighter leash on her.”

“You’re not exactly helping, are you,” Thor says, raising his eyebrows as they walk inside together. In the kitchen Peter is shouting something about a metal called gallium, while Peggy reads a letter from the council while nodding and trying to look impressed, and Bucky and Darcy are peeling sprouts and she slaps him across the chest with a whole carrot. In the yard, Selvig is watching Heimdall practice shooting on Jane’s bow and with every arrow he misses the tower of empty milk bottles on the fence and successfully terrifies the coop of chickens.

It _is_ home, for everyone except Thor.

☠☠☠

History is made on March 5th, 1770.

Thor is at the stall of the fruit vendor, holding Mjolnir over a woman’s ailing father. Too weak to make the trip to the Rogers-Barnes household, as it is officially registered, she had specially requested his presence with a parcel of free fruit that he had generously denied.

“He’s very weak,” Thor concludes after more than an hour, “but he will be fine. Bedrest and sufficient food should restore his health.”

Jane smiles and holds out a whole rabbit that she had caught in the forest, and the woman looks overwhelmed for a moment before she says, “I can’t take that.”

“No need to be gracious, I can catch more,” Jane says. “Make him a soup. It’s excellent for strength.”

They leave the stall in the wake of the woman’s shower of thanks, and Thor curls an arm around Jane’s slight shoulders. “Perhaps I should live out the rest of my life in medicine,” he jokes. “As it seems, my career is flourishing in it already.” He looks down at Jane, who laughs. 

“You mean your hammer’s career, you couldn’t even stay awake long enough for me to get that bullet out of your arm,” she says. 

“You think I’m a fraud?”

“No,” Jane says cheekily. “I think—”

When she doesn’t continue, Thor turns to her, but she has her eyebrows knit together in concern. He follows her gaze to see a loud, growing riot in the town square, a thick crowd of people gathered there. They’re all chanting something, something Thor can’t quite make out—and just over the wall of civilians, he can make out a line of men in red coats, bayonets leveled into the crowd.

Just then, he hears a gunshot ring through the air, and several uninterrupted rounds following immediately after. The shouting of the crowd turns into screams and they rush at the line of red soldiers, shouting turning into shrieks of the angry and vengeful. The throng pushes the redcoats running right in Jane and Thor’s direction, and for a split second, Thor thinks to pull Jane against his body and dive to the side, but something tells him to point Mjolnir at them—it is not a bayonet, and it hardly looks the part of a deadly weapon, and yet—

An ear-deafening blast from far behind them has him grabbing Jane and throwing them down to the dirty street, instead. She buries her face in his chest until the dust clears, and they look up slowly to see the cement of the street shattered, and the bodies of the redcoats smoked to crisps. 

The harbor is at least a mile down the street. Thor sits up, squinting through the settling debris, and sees an entirely unmanned vessel pulling into the Boston Harbor, sails a midnight black, bow lined in red and silver. On the prow is a carving of a winged hammer—a hammer identical to Mjolnir. 

“The God of Thunder,” Thor says, shaking his head in wonder. “It is about damned time.”

“Peggy!” Jane shouts, breaking away from Thor, who runs after her. He recognizes Peggy on her knees, shaking, in the center of the town. There are five other people lying around her, gore staining their clothes and surrounded by small clutches of colonists, but when Thor and Jane draw near, they realize it isn’t Peggy that’s hurt. 

She’s sobbing, teardrops falling from her face, washing clean streaks across Steve’s. There’s a patch of blood blooming across his chest, and Peggy’s hands are shaking with the effort to stem the flow of it as he gasps, bubbles of blood trickling from his mouth. Thor bends down, holding Mjolnir up to Steve’s body, but he pushes it away.

“Don’t,” he pants, teeth smeared red. “Thor, you have to promise me something.”

“Anything, Steve.”

“Whatever happens, don’t let anyone you love get hurt for you,” he says. “Unless it’s their choice, and it if it is, you must respect it to the ends of the Earth.”

Thor, feeling the prick of tears in his eyes for the first time in forever, grabs Steve’s bloody hand in his, squeezing it tight. He twists his head, painstakingly, and lifts his free hand to Peggy’s cheek.

“Don’t let Bucky blame himself,” he says. “Make sure he eats. Make sure Peter doesn’t drown himself in his work. Don’t let Darcy be alone. Hey, Peggy,” Steve coughs as he says this last part more forcefully. “I’m going to need a rain check on that dance.”

She laughs through her tears, and Steve’s hand slips from her face, the ghost of his last smile painted red across his lips.

☠☠☠

The entire town shows up to Steve Rogers' funeral.

Even those that didn’t know him personally come, and all the children carry a fistful of hand-picked daisies from the street. For the first time ever, Thor sees Peggy in a dress, long and black and regal, hair pinned up as always with a hat and a netting veil over her eyes. She leads the procession behind Bucky and Peter, who carry the casket. 

The hole has already been dug by the combined efforts of Selvig and Heimdall, who both stand beside it with their heads bowed. When the casket is lowered, all the children toss in their flowers, followed by all their parents. By the time Peggy has thrown in her last flower, there isn’t much burying left to do.

From the hill, the harbor can be seen, and the God of Thunder is still docked there, quiet and waiting. Thor looks from it to Bucky, who puts an arm around Peggy’s shoulders, and decides that it will have to wait just a little longer.

☠☠☠

The morning that Thor decides to leave is a cold one.

The night before, he had told Selvig and Heimdall of his plans, and they both immediately replied with “I’m coming with you.” Thor had opened his mouth to protest, but Steve’s words echoed in his head. 

And Thor realized that, if he were in their position—if it were Fandral or Sif leaving for a mission, he would want to go with them, no matter the risks. He stares at the window at the dreary sky, an uninterrupted blanket of white, and very gently rolls out of bed. Just as he makes to stand up, a hand shoots out from behind him and grabs his arm, unmistakably Jane’s. She hasn’t moved from her side of the bed.

“You’re leaving.” There is no question in her voice, only resignation.

“I must,” Thor says. 

“You are not letting me come with you. Your mind is made, isn’t it?”

He nods once. 

“It’s my choice.”

“Then treat this as my last wish,” Thor says, taking her face between his hands. “Because I’m sailing into the Caribbean Islands to face the most dangerous pirate to sail these seas, and if I am to die, I want to do so with the knowledge that you are safe.”

Jane blinks, eyes glittering with tears Thor knows she is too stubborn to shed, but she squeezes them shut and they slide in trails down her cheeks. “Then I will honor your wish, Captain Thor.”

He leans down and presses his lips to her forehead, then her mouth, and she leansin with a sob. Thor kisses her with just as much intensity, trying to file away the feeling of her mouth on his. When she pulls away, Thor swears he hears her whisper, “Don’t be long.”

They disappear aboard the God of Thunder without a farewell to the city. Heimdall thought it best to depart as suddenly as they arrived, and, perhaps, one day be able to return to warm welcome instead of suspicion and fear. 

“You will see her again,” Heimdall says, as Thor watches Boston Harbor melt into the horizon. He has a reassuring hand on Thor’s shoulder, right over the scar of his bullet wound, and Thor turns his head ever so slightly to acknowledge the touch.

“Keep a weather eye on her for me, will you Heimdall?”

☠☠☠

The sail to the West Indies, with the help of the trade winds and without the doldrums, is a faster one than the transatlantic.

By night Thor bends over one of Selvig’s cleaner maps, placing pins in the places where the other Lords most frequented: the Caspian Sea for Romanov, the Southern Ocean for Fury, and Mediterranean for Stark. He figures how much time it would take for each of them to have gotten to Shipwreck Island since he rose the God of Thunder from the sea and alerted all of them of a new captain. 

“There is great war across the Pirate Realms,” Heimdall says solemnly one night, crouched over his cauldron of oil and seashells, red flames small, the only light around them on that moonless night. “Loki has left a burning trail behind him, and the resurrection of this ship escaped hardly anyone...pirates are fighting for causes they’re not even sure of, blinding following the orders of their captains.”

“I must right all his wrongs,” Thor says, gripping the railing of the quarterdeck. “After this is all over.” 

“It may take years, Thor.”

They turn to see Selvig standing behind them, maps in arm. The unspoken words hang like a noose between them, and Thor stares back out into the ocean. 

“War takes time,” he agrees. “But until I can set the path of piracy on its course again, I cannot rest.”

Time, Thor has noticed, is different at sea. He’s never quite noticed it.

On land it is like clockwork, daylight coming and evening creeping right at the hour. On ship, where the only way to tell time is by pocket watches the position of the sun in the sky, time becomes fluid, like water in a bottle. 

Shipwreck Island can be seen miles away when it is occupied, even on a night as foggy as this one will be—full of orange light, lit like a fireplace. They sight it on the horizon some three weeks later, just as dusk begins to fall. Selvig scrambles to his feet and a rare smile breaks across Heimdall’s face. 

“We’re here,” he says. “And it looks like you’ve got company.”

There are already ships docked at the shore of the island, heavy anchors dropped in the sand Selvig is making his way down to where gun deck, where the anchor lies, when Thor stops short and says, “Wait a moment—Heimdall, how many ships are you counting?”

“Eight, Captain.”

“No,” Thor says. “No, it can’t—there should only be—”

He points out over the railing, at a gold-lined, jewel-prowed ship. A sickeningly familiar ship, and even from here, they can see the glitter of the cold blue sapphire in the spear at the prow. 

“It’s the Gungnir,” Thor says through gritted teeth. 

“By God, brother,” comes Loki’s voice behind them. They whirl to see him with the blade of his sword pressed up against Selvig’s pasty neck, and Selvig is whimpering, body shaking in fear. “Haven’t you even the manners to RSVP to my invitation? I thought you weren’t coming!”

A pair of ice-cold hands grabs Thor around the neck, smacks his head into the deck of the ship, and the world cuts to black.

☠☠☠

The difference between waking up this time, and the last two times, is that blood is pouring out of Thor’s nose. Also, the presence of Loki’s booted foot on his chest is a stark contrast to Heimdall’s warm voice telling him that he’s all right.

Though it could be worse. When Thor attempts to sit up, Loki presses down on his chest harder, and sweeps a hand over the deck.

“Take a look around you, Captain Thor Odinson,” he sneers. “And what you have unleashed.”

He’s surrounded by the other Pirate Lords—but rather than being intimidating, they are all forced to their knees, bound and gagged by chains that the Frost Pirates have a firm grip on. All of them are there—Romanov, Stark, Fury, Coulson, Hill, Banner, and a new face that Thor deduces must be the new Pirate Lord after the passing of his father. He swivels his head and meets Captain Natasha’s eyes, and they’re blank. A tiny spark of defiance still flickers in them. Her face is dirty, like she’s been held for a long time.

“What have you done to them?”

“Contained them, they’re like rabid dogs, Thor, I’m not quite sure how you’re friends with them. Though your lack of manners had to come from somewhere, I suppose.” He turns away, removing his foot from Thor’s body, but when Thor tries sitting up, he finds that his hands are tied. “The most important question at hand here is,” he kicks Mjolnir, which rests handle-up and refuses to budge, “where on Earth. Did you get this?”

“Why does it matter to you,” Thor spits, tasting blood on his tongue. 

“Of course your adventures mean everything to me, brother!” Loki snivels. “Only a very special place could have held such a special pirate weapon, is that what took you so long? You were off, gallivanting through the seas, looking for a useless treasure?”

“It’s not useless,” Thor retorts. “It brought me this ship. It fought enemies when we needed it to.”

Loki laughs, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, dear, dear brother. You don’t understand, do you? None of it _matters_ to me. Personally, I could care less. It matters to me because it matters to you, and taking what matters to you is the most,” he leans in close to Thor’s face, “satisfying thing I could achieve.”

He backs away, circling the impervious hammer, and Thor glares at him. “Why, even now, do you pursue revenge on me so fiercely?” Thor implores. 

“Our father,” Loki shouts, “threw me away before I even knew what it meant to be alive. I was raised, with nothing but a note pinned to my dirty blanket that said, ‘He has a brother. His name is Thor.’ Laufey found me in a _pigpen_ , Thor, do you know what that is? A place people throw their trash. That’s what I was to our father. Trash, a bastard son, a mistake of one night in Jotunheim.”

“He never cared for me either!”

“He gave you a ship!” Loki shoots back. “He may have never called you son nor even family, but that damned old man at least had the bloody shame to give you the Demigod.” 

Thor stares up at his brother. “Why did you never tell me?” he asks, voice quiet. “I never intended for you to feel any lesser than I am.”

“Say we weren’t pirates, brother, and you didn’t intend to kill a man. Are you still guilty? Yes, yes you are.”

“I don’t...Loki, please, what can I do to make this better?”

Loki pulls out his sword from its sheath, pressing the point of the blade against Thor’s neck gently, right at the point where the life pounds thunderously in his veins. “You could disappear off this Earth,” he says. 

Thor closes his eyes. 

“No!” Selvig cries. “What about—?”

He is silenced when the Frost Pirate that has him restrained claps a monstrous hand over his mouth, and Thor meets his desperate, teary gaze with his calm one. For once, he is grateful that the pirate hadn’t let Selvig finish his sentence. Better not let Loki know of Jane’s existence.

_Whatever happens, don’t let anyone you love get hurt for you. Unless it’s their choice, and it if it is, you must respect it to the ends of the Earth._

He smiles faintly. 

When he turns back to face his estranged brother, everything seems to happen in slow motion. Loki’s face turns into a snarl, and Thor never quite stops smiling. Just as the blade digs into his skin over so slightly, Thor hears a distinct buzz in the air, and a beastly scream of pain slices the air as one of the Frost Pirates tips backwards, releasing Heimdall. There is a single arrow sunken in through the bloody pulp that remains of his eye. 

Loki stands up straight, eyes no longer singing with triumph, and scans the deck of the God of Thunder.

“Who’s there?” he calls out. 

“Jane?” Thor mutters to himself, just as a shower of arrows comes raining down, hitting the Frost Pirates that are holding the Pirate Lords captive. With a great clanging of chains, they struggle to their feet, kicking away their adversaries and helping each other undo their gags and bonds. 

Loki dives out of an arrow’s trajectory, and it hits one of his men in the leg. A figure lands on the deck then, highlighted only by the moonlight. 

“What about me, Selvig?” Jane asks. She tosses a sword at him and he catches it with clumsy hands. “I think you should be more worried about yourself.”

Loki lunges for Thor, who calls Mjolnir to him by simply raising his palm up, and parries his brother’s attacks. The other Pirate Lords take this as a cue to commence battle, and Thor notices that Captain Natasha and the new Lord make a formidable pair, coupling the use of guns and swords to take out the Frost Pirates.

The Frost Pirates, truth be told, are a people native to the Arctic Island Chains, born and raised huge and brutish, nearly superhuman. Every time Thor sees an arrow land in the flesh of their arms or legs, they keep fighting, seeming only slightly bothered, ignoring the streams of blue blood that seep through their clothes. 

Selvig is a fair fighter, though out of pity the Frost Pirates set the smallest, weakest one on him. They do, however, seem to be afraid of Heimdall, and at the sight of his glowing yellow eyes run for cover. 

Jane is a dark brown flash around them, and if Thor had ever doubted the truth to her upbringing as a royal son, as opposed to a princess, he hardly doubts it now—she fights alongside Natasha and the new Lord, Thor hears Natasha call him Clint—and the three of them send more than a few Frost Pirates down into the sea below. 

“This isn’t your fight, Thor!” Loki shouts as Thor brings Mjolnir down with both hands, a sonic boom echoing across the cove when it meets Loki’s sword. He jumps back, oddly timid and defensive in his battle strategy, leaving Thor to do most of the attacking. “I’ll always win. I always have.”

“Even if you do,” Thor shouts, swinging Mjolnir across, “I won’t let you do it without a fight.”

“As you wish, brother,” Loki taunts, spinning away for a moment, and by the time Thor understand what he is doing, he is already turning back around, Jane’s neck pinned in the curve of his arm. He brings the bloodied of his sword up to her neck.

“Don’t!”

“Stop!” Loki orders.

The remaining Frost Pirates freeze, as do the rest of the Lords; no one moves a muscle as Loki smiles at the panic in Thor’s eyes. 

“Ah. So. This is what she means to you, is it?” he asks. “I’m glad, I almost grabbed that Romanov girl just now, would’ve been a bad move.” He has Jane’s hair tangled in his fingers. “Now, unless you want to see her blood painting your ship red, I suggest you put that hammer down.”

Thor pants, Mjolnir gripped tight in his hands, as he looks around at the other Lords to see if they’re giving any signs of what to do. None of them move, eyes filled with anticipation as they wait for his decision, and when Thor’s eyes dart back to Jane’s face, he sees her lips move.

_My choice._

“Down with the hammer, and she lives,” Thor says, jerking his head.

Thor’s knees crack with exhaustion as he bends down, very slowly, and sets Mjolnir down with a resounding thunk on the wood. As he stands, he raises his hands above his head, signaling surrender. Loki grins encouragingly. 

Then the terrible sound of knife on flesh echoes around them, and Jane gasps as blood spurts from her neck. 

_“No!”_

Thor’s yells tear the night apart at the seams, but two Frost Pirates grab him from behind, restraining both his arms and legs. Mjolnir rattles when he opens his palm to summon it, but one of them crushes his hand closed. In front of him, Jane collapses, dark crimson staining the cream cravat of what must be Peggy’s clothes. Heimdall and Selvig move to help her, but Loki brandishes his sword.

“Another move from any of you and he goes next,” Loki threatens. Thor continues to shout and struggle, until the bow of the God of Thunder shudders with a great groan, and the waters around them rock ominously. Everyone exchanges glances with one another, and look at Loki, but he looks equally as confused as they are.

“None of you move,” he says, striding over to the railing and looking over the edge. Over his heartbeat, Thor can hear something—the bubbling of water, insistent and strong, like hot springs beneath the ship. A deep gurgling resounds across the water, and a violent blow knocks the bottom of the ship, sending them flying. The Frost Pirates land in a heap some ways away from Thor, who struggles to his feet and runs over to Jane, who lies in a spreading pool of her own blood. Wordlessly—Thor isn’t sure she can quite talk anymore—she reaches out with bloody, shaking hands, lips wide and gasping.

“It’s going to be all right,” Thor says, fighting to keep the break out of his voice. “I’m here. I won’t leave you.”

“Sweet Calypso, daughter of Atlas,” says Stark, and Thor looks up to see the light of the moon being obscured by a long, long shadow. A horrible stench of death reaches their noses and everyone aboard retched. Thor twists his body around, and—

A giant, looming humanoid figure rises out of the water, nearly fifteen stories tall. The flesh rots off its limbs and its eyes are but cloudy white spheres in its disfigured face. It reaches out with wet, decaying fingers for Loki and the Frost Pirates. They drop their swords and run in the other direction, but it snatches them easily, like rag dolls.

A draugr. Thor never imagined he’d see one in his lifetime. 

“You,” the creature rumbles, holding Loki up to its face, struggling pirates in the other. Thor thinks he hears his father’s voice in its raspy words. “You, Loki Laufeyson, you and your men murdered me in cold blood on the coast of Sweden.”

“No—no, it wasn’t me—!”

“Do not try to run from me, Loki,” the draugr roars, rocking the ship with its bellow. “I am part of the sea itself, I see everything that happens in these waters. Do you think I did not watch you sail across the Atlantic, trying to destroy our world? You would not do well with power,” the draugr pauses, “my son.”

Loki stops squirming, staring into the rotting face of the draugr, and for a heartbeat, looks ready to break. 

Then the draugr turns, walking back out towards the ocean, descending bit by bit as if taking a staircase of sand back into the depths. Loki shrieks in protest, and Thor turns away from the sight of the undead beast sliding back into the water until the sound of his brother’s cries is silenced by the seas.

When Thor opens his eyes again, he finds his knees stained by the pool of blood he’s kneeling in, and stares into the lifeless gaze of Jane’s eyes, littered with the light of stars they could not see. Her bow and arrow are still pinned under her, and Thor brushes a lock of sticky hair away from her face with quivering fingers. 

The deck rattles as the other seven Pirate Lords gather around him in a circle. One by one, they take their hats off, holding it across their chests. None of them even knew in the slightest, Thor wagers, who Jane was, yet they know a fallen warrior when they see one. Then Captain Natasha Romanov bows, a woman who bent to no one bowing to a man.

“Orders, Captain Thor Odinson, Lord of the Baltic Sea, Pirate King.”

Then, all around her, the other Lord bow deep, bending at the waists, baring their necks to him. Even Captain Tony Stark, one of the most notoriously self-obsessed captain of the Eastern seaboard, bows to him. 

Thor is at a loss for words, throat choking up. Even when he opens his mouth, not a sound comes out. Heimdall steps forward.

“Captain,” he says, “there’s one thing left that we can try.”

“What?” Thor croaks.

“Remember the legend of Mjolnir,” Heimdall says, a strange urgency in his voice. “It can call forth storms—thunder, lightning, snow, and sleet. He who can wield it can summon the sunken ship, the God of Thunder.”

“And,” Selvig continues, voice filling with wonder, “it can bring those who died on board the God of Thunder back to life.”

Thor breathes in deep, sitting back on his heels and wiping his face furiously. He reaches behind himself, opening his palm until he feels the handle of Mjolnir in his hand, never taking his eyes off Jane’s face. He glances up at Heimdall, who nods. Thor reaches down and takes Jane’s hand in his, squeezes tight. 

“Brace yourselves,” he warns, and thrusts Mjolnir skyward. The clouds contract above them suddenly, and a bolt of lightning brighter than any Thor has ever summoned sinks down like talon’s claws, turning Shipwreck Island into nothing but a white, white world.

☠☠☠

“The American Revolution is over.”

The words are quick and whispered, hurried syllables tickling the shell of Thor’s ear. The ale turns to firecrackers in his mouth as he turns in his seat, looking into the bright face of his friend, Fandral. The music, the dancing, the shouted conversation around him falters as the news settles in his brain.

“The great age of monarchy is dead.”

Only a fortnight ago had the war of the Nine Pirate Realms ended, Thor having successfully mitigated the last one at Muspelheim, the home of Fire Pirates and Shadow Thieves. Thor has spent every minute of the celebration in Asgard, first finding that his Warriors Three and Lady Sif had survived the attack on the Demigod so long ago. He has spent every minute of it wondering if Jane was all right, back where they had left her, still so painfully lifeless, in the care of Bucky and Peggy. 

“I’m not letting another person I care for fall to those goddamned Brits,” she had sworn, and Thor has best decided not to explain that Loki was not a redcoat.

“What does this mean?” Thor asks.

“Well, not only does it mean that there are going to be a great many changes to this world soon,” Fandral says, curling his mustache, “but that Princess Jane no longer has a bounty hunter’s price over her head.”

Thor laughs, and for the first time since the battle at Shipwreck Island, he feels whole again. Fandral slaps him across the shoulder as Thor tears out of the pub, jumping over drunken couples kissing and, at one point, dodging a flying stool, and runs out to the docks. 

Heimdall is sitting on the boardwalk, bare feet in the water. Thor slows, coming to a stop beside him and stares out into the black ocean.

“You will be taking a long journey,” Heimdall states simply. “Will you be doing it alone?”

Thor looks over his shoulder, catching sight of Selvig sleeping facedown and quite drunk in Volstagg’s lap. “I believe so.”

“A choice I must respect, then, Captain Thor.”

“Can you see her?” Thor inclines his head to the faint horizon. “Jane?”

Heimdall chuckles.

“Yes.”

“How is she?”

“She dreams of you.”

☠☠☠

Boston Harbor looks a little different when Thor pulls in. There are no more men in red coats, marching in forbidding rows through the streets, and the men that remain no longer wear the pompous white wigs of the British court.

People stare at him in wonder when he docks, and some even cheer when he raises Mjolnir, but today, he isn’t taking any appointments. Thor makes his way for the marketplace, where he knows the Barnes household, as it’s now called, is located. Children run after him, too scared to get his attention, yet too curious to leave him alone. 

Thor is right about to pound on the door of the house when he notices someone moving around through the glass windows of Steve’s shop, and when he looks in, he sees Jane. She’s wearing a plain dress, hair loose down her back, laughing. Across her neck there is a faint red line, but here she is, pink-cheeked at something Peter—it must be Peter—and a beautiful blonde girl said. Here she is. Thor smiles.

And knocks on the door.

**Author's Note:**

> \- based on [this photoset and au](http://smellephants.tumblr.com/post/85737871627/thor-pirates-of-the-caribbean-au-when-odin) by the lovely, lovely smellephants  
> \- god bless all the wonderful people in [this post](http://queen-frigga.tumblr.com/post/67293878478/ecumenicalseeker-robotunicorncastiel) for sciencing mjolnir, you are the future of physics and engineering  
> \- if this is historically correct then i am actually a pack of kleenex. for example, all of the non-pirate ships were real, but king george had no trouble with producing offspring and was in fact blessed with 15 children  
> \- ft. quotes by and references to fictional/irl characters from virtually everywhere such as but not limited to stitch and banksy oh_god_meme.jpg


End file.
